Collaborative Online Annotation for Active Reading: Pedagogies, Tools, and Challenges

Streaming Media

Abstract

Collaborative annotation tools enable students to work online together to highlight and comment on digital texts such as scanned PDFs. This presentation explores the use of collaborative annotation tools as part of a broader blended learning pedagogy for reading-intensive courses, where instructors often wrestle with getting students to "do the reading" before class. In such courses, the task of "reading" is assumed to be done individually by each student before class, while in-class time is expected to focus on "discussing" and elaborating on the texts. Blending these together allows the use of more active learning in the reading process. Before class, students work on the readings both individually and collaboratively, marking up a shared digital version of the reading online so that other students (and instructors) can see a "heat map" of highlighted sections and marginalia. This enables some of the "discussion" to happen before class, since students and instructors can respond to comments "in the margin" thereby creating a contextualized discussion thread on specific pages. Such an approach also provides the instructor an indicator of where key questions or clarifications arise in the body of the text so that in-class discussion can be structured more fruitfully. While a variety of collaborative annotation tools exist (NB.mit.edu, eMargin, hypothes.is, etc.), this presentation dives into the specific pedagogies and implementation challenges to be considered in choosing a particular tool for class use. The presentation will draw from preliminary explorations at Amherst College

Session

Session 5A. Blending to Promote Active, Collaborative Reading

Location

Dalton 300

Event Website

http://www.kineticnow.com/

Start Date

5-21-2015 9:00 AM

End Date

5-21-2015 10:15 AM

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May 21st, 9:00 AM May 21st, 10:15 AM

Collaborative Online Annotation for Active Reading: Pedagogies, Tools, and Challenges

Dalton 300

Collaborative annotation tools enable students to work online together to highlight and comment on digital texts such as scanned PDFs. This presentation explores the use of collaborative annotation tools as part of a broader blended learning pedagogy for reading-intensive courses, where instructors often wrestle with getting students to "do the reading" before class. In such courses, the task of "reading" is assumed to be done individually by each student before class, while in-class time is expected to focus on "discussing" and elaborating on the texts. Blending these together allows the use of more active learning in the reading process. Before class, students work on the readings both individually and collaboratively, marking up a shared digital version of the reading online so that other students (and instructors) can see a "heat map" of highlighted sections and marginalia. This enables some of the "discussion" to happen before class, since students and instructors can respond to comments "in the margin" thereby creating a contextualized discussion thread on specific pages. Such an approach also provides the instructor an indicator of where key questions or clarifications arise in the body of the text so that in-class discussion can be structured more fruitfully. While a variety of collaborative annotation tools exist (NB.mit.edu, eMargin, hypothes.is, etc.), this presentation dives into the specific pedagogies and implementation challenges to be considered in choosing a particular tool for class use. The presentation will draw from preliminary explorations at Amherst College

https://repository.brynmawr.edu/blended_learning/2015/2015/27